In the aftermath of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma causing extensive damage to parts of southeast Texas and the Florida coast, the Story County Sheriff’s Office has been working with the Department of Homeland Security and other national organizations in the public and private sector to implement a system to ensure these affected areas receive the aid and supplies needed in a timely fashion.

Sheriff Paul Fitzgerald currently serves as the director of four separate boards under the DHS — Science and Technology, SAFECOM, National Public Safety Telecommunications Council (NPSIC), and Infrastructure Protection — and for the past nine years, he has been working with the Emergency Services Sector of the DHS (which Fitzgerald sits as chair on) to develop a program known as Crisis Event Response, Recovery, and Access (CERRA), to help speed up and smooth out the process of bringing in supply trucks through numerous checkpoints before the reach the sites.

“Even before (Hurricane) Katrina, there was the issue of when disaster hits somewhere, the biggest thing that you have right after the disaster is re-entry and access into the disaster areas,” Fitzgerald said. “For something like a small business, if they aren’t back up and running within a couple of days, that could put them out of business.”

When supply trucks come in, Fitzgerald said that they have to be stopped at checkpoints and authorized to enter. Rather than making dozens of calls, risking someone fraudulently printing out a clearance pass or letter of authorization, this process can all be streamlined through a phone app.

“It’s meant to be efficient for law enforcement. It takes the decision-making model off the shoulders of the law enforcement personnel at the checkpoint,” Fitzgerald said. “The officer catches hell if he lets the wrong person in, and he catches hell if he doesn’t let the right person in. Well how’s the officer supposed to know?”

According to Story County Sheriff’s Lt. Gary Backous — who is also involved with the DHS Inter-Agency Board — now anyone who is entering an affected area simply has a QR code scanned by supervisors at the checkpoints with a verification app which glows green when someone has clearance, and red if that person doesn’t.

“You’ve got the person’s name, linked with a picture, what tier level they are, and all the supporting information so you can confidently say, ‘move on,’” Backous said.

If this type of app and program would have been used after Hurricane Harvey, Backous said that certain issues could have been resolved much quicker. According to Backous, after Harvey hit a truck full of helium was stopped at a checkpoint on its way into Houston for hours because law enforcement personnel had no idea why a truck full of helium would be headed to a natural disaster site. Eventually they realized that helium is used to run MRI machines, and this shipment was headed to different hospitals.

“Under this system (CERRA), this person upon making request for this equipment, gets entered into the system, prints off this placard, gets to the checkpoint, and the officer scans it,” Backous said. “When it turns green the person is able to move on in a minute compared to hours.”

According to Fitzgerald, once scanned, this new system tracks where people go in the disaster area, so if they are in an area they don’t have clearance, law enforcement can locate them and escort them out. Once people leave the area, the program keeps a record of what time they left and where they are headed back to.

Currently, the system is not mandated by the federal government, and is up to individual states and counties if they want to implement it into their crisis response systems. For the ones that have implemented CERRA, such as Mississippi and Louisiana, Fitzgerald said the response has been phenomenal.

According to Fitzgerald, CERRA is currently implemented in Story County, and would be used should a disaster occur. Fitzgerald said the program is also starting to be implemented at universities as well, and having been designed by local law enforcement agencies from across the country, he thinks more areas will hopefully accept the new program to held get it rolled out nationwide.

“We’re starting to make some progress and people are seeing it and recognizing it, but we still have to get all the sectors buy in on it and willing to use it,” Fitzgerald said. “Once we do that, we’re off and running.”